Figshare Launches Collections - a "Pinterest" for Academic Research Outputs

Figshare Collections delivers a new way to group together research; publicly or privately

London,UK & Boston, USA (PRWEB UK) 24 March 2016

Figshare, an online digital repository for academic research, has launched Collections, which offers the research community, including publishers and funders, a "Pinterest" for academic research outputs. It enables users to gather any data types on Figshare including video, posters and code, whether public or private, to give it new context.

As researchers have access to increasing volumes of data, Collections allows users to group together relevant content from within Figshare into themed "Collections". These Collections can be publicly shared with their own URL and view counts to gauge popularity. When a Collection is published it generates a DOI (digital object identifier) to provide more stable linking. These Collections can be updated and edited by the owner at any time to include new versions of research and new research outputs.

Collections has a multitude of benefits including:

•     Publishers are able group all supplementary data around a particular article
•     Research Funders could collate all the research outputs linked to a particular grant code
•     Institutions can bring together all data and outputs around a topic or the presentations/information from workshop or conference they have hosted
•     Researchers can create personal Collections for all of the work related to a certain trending research area which is of interest to them and their collaborators

Mark Hahnel, founder of Figshare explained, "Collections has many exciting uses, to enable the management of the sheer volumes and variety of types of research information available online into contextual groups which can then be shared, whilst still affording ownership and traceability to authors."

Figshare is the first digital repository to offer this functionality. An early example of Collections in use can be seen in action at a ZikaOpen Collection by researcher and CSO at Collaborative Drug Discovery, Sean Ekins.

Watch a demonstration video here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/5kuFdgveL3Q

-ENDS-

About Figshare

Figshare is a web-based platform to help academic institutions manage, disseminate and measure the public impact of all their research outputs. The light-touch and user friendly approach focuses on four key areas: research data management, reporting and statistics, research data dissemination and user group administration. Figshare works with institutions all over the world to help them meet the key funder requirements around open research data and maximize the impact of their research. Figshare is part of the Digital Science family. For more information, visit (http://figshare.com).

About Digital Science
Digital Science is a technology company serving the needs of scientific and research communities, at the laboratory bench or in a research setting. It invests in and incubates scientific software companies that simplify the research cycle, making more time for discovery. Its portfolio companies include a host of leading and admired brands including Altmetric, BioRAFT, Figshare, Labguru, Overleaf, ReadCube, Symplectic and ÜberResearch. It is operated by global media company, the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Visit http://www.digital-science.com and follow @digitalsci on Twitter.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/03/prweb13291308.htm